t lingered in Teresa's voice. "They ask me fairly
often. She's very kind. Of course, we're not--intimate. She's so much
older."

"Is she?" Peignton asked, and was happily unaware of his companion's
flush of displeasure. "She looks very young. It must be lonely for her
in that big place. I'm glad she has you for a friend." His voice
softened as he spoke the last, words. He turned his head to cast a
smiling glance at the girl's figure, and the thought came to his mind
that just in this simple, unpretentious fashion would they drive back to
their joint home during the years to come. It would not run to more
than a cart, but she had not been used to luxury, and was quite content
in her Burberry and cap. It was not like marrying a society woman.
Heaven knows what fallals Lady Cassandra would don for a like occasion.
Peignton admired "fallals," meaning by the term dainty, feminine
accessories, as all men do, apart from the question of price. He could
not for his life have described Cassandra's costume that evening, but it
had left its impression as a mysterious floating thing, infinitely
removed from the garments of men. Teresa was essentially tailor-made.
A good thing too, for the wife of a poor man!

"I wonder what on earth made her many him!"

"Made her--" Teresa's blue eyes widened in astonishment. "Lady
Cassandra? Because she loved him, of course."

"Is it of course? Are there no other reasons for marriage, Miss
Teresa?"

"There ought not to be. There are not... in Chumley. But of course we
are not smart."

"No." Peignton was once more unconscious of offence. "Still, it's
sometimes difficult to fit the theory to individual cases! Do you never
look at the couples around you, and wonder how on earth they came to
fancy each other? I believe many of them wonder themselves before a
year is past. I can't imagine Lady Cassandra choosing Raynor!"

"Mr Raynor is very nice. He is a good landlord. People like him very
much."

"I like him myself. He's a very excellent specimen of his type. I'm
not depreciating Raynor as a man--only as a husband for one particular
wife. She's everything that is vivid and alive, he's everything
that's--slow! It's a mystery how she took him!"

"Perhaps," Teresa said shrewdly, "he wasn't so slow _then_! He was in
love with her, you see."

She used the past tense in placid acceptance of an obvious fact;
Peignton accepted it also, his curiosity concerning the Ra